Exploitation in the American Academy: College Athletes and Self-perceptions of Value

Exploitation in the American Academy: College Athletes and Self-perceptions of Value Derek Van Rheenen, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA Abstract: The exploitation ofcollege athletes, particularly Black revenue athletes, has been apersistent topic of controversy within American higher education for the past halfcentwy Strikingly absent in this literature are the college athletes themselves This research study of581 NCAA Division] college athletes examines these participants ‘perceptions offeeling exploited by the universityfor their athletic ability andpotential Comparative analyses are reported based upon gender, race, year-in-school and scholarship status D[ferences between revenue, defined asfootball and men basketball, and nonrev enue or Olympic sports (all other intercollegiate athletic teams) are reported Findings demonstrate significant dlfferences across several of these demographic and sport-specific categories Findings also suggest that the perceived exploitation experienced by college athletes is more complicated than a simplefinancial or educational exchange Several social and educational implications are discussed Keywords: American College Athletes, Black Revenue College Athletes, Exploitation, Self-perceptions of Institutional Value HE EXPLOITATION OF college athletes, particularly Black college athletes, has been a persistent topic of controversy within American higher education for the past half a century This controversy is punctuated each year by football and basketball championships, when the public appetite for parades, pageantry and an ever-increasing number of televised games has been described as inducing fever and madness During these times in particular, exposés and editorials abound, decrying low graduation rates and the recruitment and commodification of young men and women solely for their athletic talent and potential Edwards (1985) articulated the case well some 25 years ago when he wrote: T For decades, student athletes, usually 17-to-i year-old freshmen, have informally agreed to a contract with the universities they attend: athletic performance in exchange for an education The athletes have kept their part of the bargain; the universities have not Universities and athletic departments have gained huge gate receipts, television revenues, national visibility, donors to university programs, and more as a result of the performances of gifted basketball and football players, of whom a disproportionate number of the most gifted and most exploited have been Black (p 373) As evidence that this controversy persists today, decades after Edwards first made these as sertions, United States Secretary ofEducation Arne Duncan refocused attention on this issue when he proposed that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bar any team from participating in the post-season tournament if it fails to graduate at least 40% of its players If the proposed rule had applied to the 2010 NCAA men’s basketball tournament, The Tnternauonal Journal of Sport and Society Volume 201 I http.!/sportandsocietv corn/journal! TSSN 2152-7857 G Common Ground Derek Van Rheeneii All Rights Reserved, Penatss,ons cg-supportQicontmongroundpublishingcom THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY 12 of the 65 teams would have been ineligible for post-season play Duncan argued that, “If you can’t manage to graduate two out of five players, how serious are the institutions and the colleges about the players’ academic success?” A former college basketball player at Harvard University Duncan noted, “My father taught me a long time ago that a university has a dual mission, to educate its students and to prepare them for life If a college fails to educate all of its students, then that university has failed its mission It’s time to start holding coaches and institutions more accountable for the academic outcomes of their athletes” (Blackburn, 2010, para 8) Since former executive director ofthe NCAA Walter Byers coined the term student-athlete in the 1950s (Sperber, 1999), scholars and educational administrators have weighed in on this controversy, fueling a debate over the commercialization of college sports and the commodification ofyoung men and women (Byers & Hammer, 1995: Coakley, 2009; Eitzen, 2000; Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, 2010; Rigauer, 1981; Sage, 1998; Zimbalist, 1999, 2001, 2006) Faculty and former university presidents (e.g., Bowen & Levin, 2003; Duderstadt, 2000; Shulman & Bowen, 2001; Sperber, 1990, 2000) caution against the promotion of college sports at the expense of academic priorities and the mission of higher education Most agree that the revenue-producing sports offootball and basketball pose the greatest threat to institutional control and integrity The college athletes recruited to compete in these sports pose an institutional dilemma, as they are often the most academ ically under-prepared relative to other students but admitted nonetheless As evidence that signing a top athletic class is big business, nearly half of NCAA Division I athletics depart ments doubled their recruiting budgets from 1997 to 2007 (Sanders, 2008) Perhaps as a result of this trend, recruiting violations account for over two-thirds of the total major viola tions in the NCAA since 1987 and have increased markedly since the inception of the BCS computer model for determining the national championship game (Clark & Batista, 2009; Van Rheenen, 2010) Economists quantify the potential earnings of high-profile, blue-chip athletes for their college campuses, arguing that a college athlete who is eventually drafted in the National Football League (NFL) or National Basketball Association (NBA) will likely produce upwards of $500,000 to $1,000,000 in annual revenues for their college teams (Brown, 1993; Fish, 2009; Marshall, 1994; Zimbalist, 1999, 2001) In return, a signed National Letter of Intent, a promissory note of sorts for attending one particular institution over any other, secures merely a one-year financial commitment by the institution to pay the recruited athlete’s tuition, books, room and board and nominal monthly stipend While this full athletics grant-in-aid, often called a “free ride,” may be significant, and recent NCAA legislation will now allow for multi-year athletic scholarships, the costs to the institution are often less than the revenues generated by such high-profile athletes Of course, the majority of college athletes is neither high-profile nor engaged in the revenue-producing sports of men’s basketball and football Thus, the majority of student athletes generate no revenue for their respective institutions but cost an enormous amount to sustain The financial imbalances between revenue athletes and their institutions have led critics to highlight the surplus value and financial gains expropriated by colleges and universities on the backs ofthese young men (Edwards, 1970; Sack 1979; Sailes, 1986: Scott, 1971) and the corresponding alienation, isolation and powerlessness experienced by college athletes (Coakiey, 2009; Edwards, 1973; Eitzen, 1993; Lapchick, 2001; Rigauer, 1981; Sellers, 2000) The fact that a disproportionate number of recruited student athletes in the revenue-producing DEREK VAN RHEENEN sports of football and basketball are African American has further ignited charges of institu tionalized racism, comparing the college and professional playing fields to the antebellum plantation and the historical legacy of American slavery (Deford, 2005; Eitzen, 2000; Hawkins 2010; Mahiri & Van Rheenen, 2010; Rhoden, 2006) As such, these student athletes are cast in the press and literature as victims of an unfair exchange, promised a college degree as the educational outcome of their athletic labor While African American student athletes tend to graduate at higher rates than African American college students at non-historically Black schools generally (NCAA, 201 Ob), only 20 ofthe 50 flagship state (e.g., public) universities post a higher graduation rate for African American athletes relative to African American students generally An editorial in the Journal ofBlacks in Higher Education (2005) argues, It appears that many of these flagship state universities are admitting Black students who are not academically qualified for even the moderately rigorous curricula at these schools In many cases, these Black athletes are admitted solely for the purpose of their participation in intercollegiate athletics The case is strong that these flagship universities are exploiting Blacks for their athletic talents while frequently ignoring their educational needs (p 2) Wertheimer (1996) further notes, “When critics claim that colleges exploit student athletes, they typically imply that when colleges provide genuine educational opportunities, they are not engaged in exploitation” (p 89) But even when these students graduate, there may be claims that the college athlete has been exploited, often citing a degree in a major or dis cipline with little value As James Duderstadt (2000), former college football player and President of the University of Michigan notes, “Some universities take advantage of their student-athletes, exploiting their athletic talents for financial gain and public visibility, and tolerating low graduation rates and meaningless degrees in majors like general studies or recreational life” (p 5—6), These criticisms generally frame the relationship of the institution to their college athlete within a paternalistic structure, where colleges and universities bear primary, if not full, re sponsibility for the educational outcome of their students In reality, of course, the promise is nothing more than an educational opportunity Because students must act to realize their opportunity, it is problematic to speak of an institutional promise; however, as noted above, ifthe educational opportunity is unlikely to be realized based upon structural constraints and conflicts, andlor even with genuine effort expended on the part of the college athlete, the relationship may well be exploitive Purpose of the Study Only a few studies to date have specifically examined college athletes’ perceptions of feeling exploited or victimized by their educational institutions One exception is Leonard’s (1986) article, “The Sports Experience ofthe Black College Athlete: Exploitation in the Academy,” in which he concludes that Black (and White) college basketball players not feel categor ically abused or exploited In his article, Leonard defines exploitation as a multi-dimensional concept His analysis includes several rubrics and a wide array of questions (he lists 23 questions as a sample of Likert items used) to assess whether these individuals feel exploited While the author is correct to ask college athletes how they feel about their lived experiences, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY Leonard’s definition of exploitation is overly broad, drawing on multiple factors without any clear indication that these perceptions speak to these individuals’ feelings of being ex ploited for their athletic talents In their rich ethnographic study of one men’s Division I college basketball team, Adler and Adler (1991) found that these basketball college athletes increased their sense of exploit ation as they matriculated from freshmen through their senior year According to these authors, players developed their strongest feelings of exploitation during their senior year, “recasting their perception of their relationship to the University from one of exchange to one of ex ploitation” (p 193) Like Leonard, Adler and Adler’s study focuses solely on male basketball players, limiting the ability to contrast their perceptions with college athletes from other sports teams In a more recent qualitative study of former Division I college athletes, Beamon (2008) found that most of the respondents felt taken advantage of by their college or university, described by one informant as feeling like “used goods.” While 17 of the 20 informants graduated from their respective institutions, the author reported that “90% noted that univer sities were reaping greater benefits, financial and otherwise, than student-athletes” (p 362) While Beamon’s study provides an in-depth ethnographic picture of athletic exploitation in the academy, her study, like Adler and Adler’s qualitative study of a single men’s basketball team, is limited to a small sample Her findings are based upon interviews with 20 African American male college athletes who had previously played Division I football and basketball Despite their conflicting results, all ofthese studies focus solely on revenue college athletes, the population most often described as exploited in the literature and popular press These studies, while important, not allow for comparative analyses by type of sport (revenue vs non-revenue), gender (male andfemale), race, year-in-school and scholarship status The purpose of this study, then, is to examine student athlete perceptions of feeling exploited by the university The research questions examine perceptions of institutional exploitation among a cross-section of all college athletes at a single university Method Participants and Procedures Subjects of this study were 581 Division I college student athletes participating in 17 sports enrolled at a large public institution on the west coast of the United States Annual surveys were administered at the same institution between 2006 and 2009 The same survey items were used iii three different rounds of data collection The largest of the three surveys was conducted as part of an institutional certification process in 2006 The survey was administered on-line, of which 474 active college athletes completed the survey for an overall response rate of 64% The response rate varied widely by sport from a low of 20% (women’s basket ball) to a high of 83% (men’s rugby) This on-line survey took approximately 30 minutes to complete The other two surveys were administered in the author’s undergraduate course in 2008 and 2009, in which a large number of college athletes were enrolled These paper and pencil surveys took approximately 15—20 minutes to complete Surveys were analyzed independently and as a larger data set DEREK VAN RHEENEN Measures Demographics The survey included demographic questions which elicited respondents’ (a) sport, (b) gender, (c) race/ethnicity, (d) year-in-school (freshmen, sophomore, junior, senior), and (e) scholarship status The percentage ofrespondents within these demographic variables are outlined in Table I Exploitation Three items from Simons and Van Rheenen’s (2000) scale were used to measure college athletes’ perception of feeling exploited by their institution Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each of these items on a Likert scale ranging from I (strongly disagree) to (strongly agree) The three questions were: (a) “Sometimes I feel that I am being taken advantage of as an athlete,” (b) “I give more to the university than it gives to me,” and (c) “This university makes too much money off its athletes, who see very little of it.” The internal reliability or Chronbach’s alpha ofthe three-item scale was 80 Table I: Demographic Variables (N581) Rae Gentle, i Yea, - In Cdlltgn 3113011 P.trti,ipar,ttt Mate lentaiR Rla,k While 2? 13 GIRd 31 31 3t102 33? II Ltt3I13 25 2 1,0 Yet 1 21 Ia 3 3 13 2 Subgroup Differences A primary objective of this study was to identii’ differences, if any, among subgroups of college athletes Comparative analyses were conducted based upon self-reported gender, race, year-in-school, scholarship status, and sport Differences between revenue, defined as football and men’s basketball, and Olympic or non-revenue sports (all other intercollegiate athletic teams) were also reported THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY Results Pearson’s chi-square tests of independence were calculated and logic regressions were run to test the joint probability of several binary random variables under study The significance of these odds ratios (OR) were also reported Table illustrates the chi-square analyses and tested odds ratios for the entire sample of Division I college athletes Table 2: Chi-square Analyses and Odds Ratios of Perception of Exploitation among College Athletes N=581) 33pbtted Nat eptatted Odds Odds RatIo Peassoa CR02 Ps a CR02 33.33 C’.OOO”’ tory Sport No 33 40 13 2.,42 130 330 CC 34 u5 GendEr 33 Fesssls Race (Black 1.30 0.32 333 Cr34 1.03 White x Othet) 933 OCh51: 0.42 23 Race (Bl.a k x NoetBiack) Slack 33 23 320 51 10.4 CC45 Year in college $opCosccae Year in s.ailete (Senior WasoSenia;) Sarco 21 33 0.24 rlc.aaracc 3•39 0.43 347 30 Scholorship statas cc%c 2? Overall Responses Sport In analyzing the student athletes by the type of sport in which they participate, 25% of student-athletes on non-revenue sports teams and 71% of student athletes on revenue sports teams tended to feel exploited by their university This difference by revenue status is significant: x (1, N= 581) = 56.78,p